An Anarchist FAQ after 20 years

It is now 20 years since An Anarchist FAQ (AFAQ) was officially launched and six years since the core of it was completed (version 14.0). Its has been published by AK Press as well as translated into numerous languages. It has been quoted and referenced by other works. So it has been a success – although when it was started I had no idea what it would end up like.

I am particularly happy that AK Press took the time and invested the resources to turn it into a book. Volume 1 of AFAQ (sections A to F plus the appendix on “The Symbols of Anarchy”) was published in 2008 followed by volume 2 (sections H to J, slightly abridged) in 2012. Both volumes are impressive in both size and presentation – they look lovely.

Since then, though, there has been little done – a revision of an appendix about a laughingly bad Marxist anti-anarchist diatribe (more or less a copy of Hal Draper’s equally bad Two Souls of Socialism). The unfinished appendix on the Russian Revolution remains so and the other appendices need to be revised. I hope to correct this by the 30th anniversary of AFAQ but no promises!

In my defence, I have been busy. Numerous other articles and reviews have been produced thanks to the work embodied into AFAQ and it has produced two other books: anthologies of Proudhon’s and Kropotkin’s works (Property is Theft! and Direct Struggle Against Capital, respectively). Both came about due to the research AFAQ needed – it showed that the picture we had of both key thinkers was not completely accurate. Both confirm the analysis of AFAQ on the nature of anarchism (i.e., libertarian socialism) and its history. Both would have been helpful in days-past when debating propertarians (right-wing “libertarians”) and Marxists.

Taking Proudhon, before Property is Theft! very little of his voluminous writings had been translated into English and much of his writings – particularly his journalism and polemics during the 1848 revolution – were unknown. We now have a better idea of his ideas and contribution to anarchism as well as allowing various false, but commonplace, assertions about his ideas to be refuted.[1] Marx’s claim that he advocated “Labour Notes” (i.e., pricing and payment by hours worked) was simply a baseless assertion made in the face of clear evidence in System of Economic Contradictions to the opposite (he advocated generalising “bills of exchange” as many commentators correctly noted).[2]The Poverty of Philosophy is, as Proudhon noted at the time, “the libel of one doctor Marx” and should be dismissed as “a tissue of crudities, slanders, falsifications, and plagiarism.”[3] Sadly, this deeply dishonest work has shaped our perception of Proudhon (even in the anarchist movement) but hopefully the real Proudhon – advocate of self-managed (market) socialism – will become better known.[4]

It also became clear that those who most loudly proclaimed their allegiance to Proudhon, namely Benjamin Tucker and other (but not all) individualist anarchists, were very selective in what they took from him. Proudhon’s critique of wage-labour and corresponding advocacy of self-management and socialisation were lost on Tucker.[5] Revolutionary anarchism is closer to Proudhon’s ideas than those who claimed his mantle – but this championing of Proudhon by Tucker shaped how many viewed the Frenchman and yet another false image (albeit less false than the one Marx invented) was created.

Similarly with Kropotkin – while more of his writings were available in English, these were the more general introductions to anarchism and his “day-to-day” journalism in the anarchist press (particularly the French) was unknown. This gave a somewhat skewed impression of his ideas and helped those seeking to portray him as a utopian or reformist (whether Marxists or self-proclaimed anarchists). This was because while the key texts on ends were readily available, the texts on means were less so. This does not excuse those – like the reformist (“liberal”) wing of British anarchism in the 1960s onwards (and who were readily echoed by Marxists) – who portrayed Kropotkin as anything other than the revolutionary, class struggle anarchist he was for even these general works included references to unions, strikes, insurrections and so forth. Moreover, Caroline Cahm’s excellent book Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, 1872-1886 has shown this aspect of anarchism since 1989 – indeed, Direct Struggle Against Capital owes a great deal to her research in tracking down numerous key articles from Kropotkin’s early journalism.

These two works also indicate another improvement over the past 20 years – the increase in good quality research on anarchism and anarchists. We have had Emma Goldman’s papers published while AK Press has just started the publication of Errico Malatesta’s Collected Works. Shawn Wilbur continues his sterling work making Proudhon accessible and, moreover, has translated Bakunin’s Collected Works for PM Press. Nestor Makhno’s writings and autobiographies are also available in English. To name just a few amongst a host of excellent histories of movements and individuals.

All this is very welcome but more is needed – thinkers like Luigi Fabbri need their works available in English and key source materials (such as James Guillaume’s L’internationale: documents et souvenirs) are also in need of translation. Even for figures like Kropotkin, a whole wealth of material in French, Russian and English which remains inaccessible and/or untranslated in archives.[6] However, such research and translation is time and resource consuming and few anarchists have much of either (being working class people in the main, we need to both earn a living and have a social life). Yet compared to where the movement was when AFAQ was started, we have seen significant progress. I hope that my work has helped this in some way. One thing is sure, AFAQ does save a lot of time because it can be referenced when the all-too-often myths about anarchism are raised (yet again!) by Marxists, propertarians and others.

As with any project, once it was completed I realised how I should have started. What is clear now is that the usual account of anarchism which starts in the distant past before discussing William Godwin and Max Stirner is not right. Regardless of their merits, neither of these people influenced the rise of anarchism as a theory or a movement. Indeed, both were discovered by a fully developed anarchist movement in the 1890s and, ironically, the only impact Stirner had in his lifetime was on Marx and what became Marxism (needless to say, Marx distorted Stirner’s ideas just as much as he did Proudhon’s or Bakunin’s).

Anarchism developed in the context of the French workers’ movement and so embodied the legacies of the French Revolution (and its “Anarchists”) as well as the critique of liberalism and capitalism current within French radical circles. Proudhon’s seminal What is Property? was not written in a social vacuum nor did his ideas develop without a social and intellectual context. Anarchism, then, was born in the context of the rising labour movement. It flows from the associationist ideas raised by French workers faced with industrialisation – that is, proletarianisation. They rejected the inequalities and hierarchies associated with the rise of capitalism as sought to apply democratic ideas within the workplace and so abolish wage-labour by association.

This reflected workers during the Great French Revolution about whom one building employer moaned were, “by an absurd parody of the government, regard their work as their property, the building site as a Republic of which they are jointly citizens, and believe in consequence that it belongs to them to name their own bosses, their inspectors and arbitrarily to share out the work amongst themselves.”[7] Proudhon echoed this position repeatedly throughout his works:

“Workers’ Associations are the locus of a new principle and model of production that must replace present-day corporations [...] The principle that prevailed there, in place of that of employers and employees [...] is participation [...] There is mutuality, in fact, when in an industry, all the workers, instead of working for an owner who pays them and keeps their product, work for one another and thereby contribute to a common product from which they share the profit.”[8]

Workers’ self-management of production by means of associations has been a part of anarchism from the start (from What is Property?: “leaders [...] must be chosen from the workers by the workers themselves”[9]) and any form of “anarchism” which rejects this in favour of factory fascism (wage-labour) is hardly libertarian.

This means that the all-too-common notion of anarchism being a fusion (confusion!) of “socialism” (presumably Marxism) and liberalism is simply wrong. Anarchism is a school of socialism (“the no-government system of socialism”, to quote Kropotkin[10]) and cut its teeth critiquing liberalism and the class-ridden, unequal and unfree society it was creating. It was then members of this well-defined movement who could look back at the likes of Godwin and popular movements note similarities between their ideas on the state, property, etc. and those which had arisen later and, crucially, independently of them. These pre-1840 thinkers and movements can be better described as anarchistic rather than anarchist as such.

This analysis of where anarchism comes from is relevant to current events. Take inequality, or more correctly the recognition within mainstream politics and journalism that massive inequality exists and is rising. When AFAQ was started, this was generally denied but now the recognition of reality is at least acknowledged and, often, deplored, by some of the elite (usually politicians seeking votes). The denials of reality could be surreal – I remember reading an edition of the Economist at the turn of the millennium which had editorialised that the 20th century had shown Marx’s predictions of a tiny minority of wealthy capitalists surrounded by a sea of impoverished proletarians to be false while, a few pages elsewhere, had a report on how inequality in America and elsewhere in the West had exploded so resulting in a few very wealthy people and the rest stagnating. The contradiction between ideology (faith) and reality (facts) could not have been more obvious – at least if you weren’t the editors or a true believer in capitalism.

Perhaps needless to say, the reasons why this has happened have been much discussed but as it has been within a neo-classical framework it has not gotten very far. This is understandable as that ideology was developed precisely to rationalise and justify the inequalities of capitalism and not to explain them (see section C). Taking an anarchist analysis (as first expounded by Proudhon before being taken up by Marx) it is easy to understand why inequality has expounded. As section C.2 indicates, labour is exploited by capital and the former has been weakened over the last four decades by neo-liberalism (not least by increased state regulation of unions) and so workers cannot retain more of the value we produce as the product is monopolised by the owning class and senior management.

This means, for example, that the exploding wages of CEOs is not an example of “market failure” as some claim but rather an expression of how the capitalist market is meant to work.[11] Which all flows back to where anarchism came from, namely the (French) workers’ movement, and what it was born fighting, namely a rising capitalism and its ideological expression of (classical) liberalism.

Thus we find John Locke’s just-so story justifying property results “by a tacit and voluntary consent” to “a disproportionate and unequal Possession of the Earth”[12] Yet any agreement between the owners and proletariat would favour the former and once the worker has consented to being under the authority of the wealthy then her labour and its product is no longer hers: “Thus the grass my horse has bit; the Turfs my Servant has cut; and the Ore I have digg’d… become my Property.” The workers’ labour “hath fixed my [the employer’s] property” in both the product and common resources worked upon.[13] Locke’s defence of property as resting on labour becomes the means to derive the worker of the full product of her labour[14] – as intended.

Compare this with anarchism. Proudhon’s analysis brings him into conflict with Locke and the liberal tradition. Rejecting the notion that master-servant contracts were valid, he dismisses its basis of property in the person in a few words: “To tell a poor man that he has property because he has arms and legs, – that the hunger from which he suffers, and his power to sleep in the open air are his property, – is to play with words, and add insult to injury.” Property, then, is solely material things – land, workplaces, etc. – and their monopolisation results in authoritarian relationships. To “recognise the right of territorial property is to give up labour, since it is to relinquish the means of labour”, which results in the worker having “sold and surrendered his liberty” to the proprietor. This alienation of liberty is the means by which exploitation happens. Whoever “labours becomes a proprietor” of his product but by that Proudhon did “not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists)” – and Locke – the “proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages” but “proprietor of the value which he creates, and by which the master alone profits.” Locke is also clearly the target for Proudhon’s comment that “the horse […] and ox […] produce with us, but are not associated with us; we take their product, but do not share it with them. The animals and workers whom we employ hold the same relation to us.”[15]

As noted, the rise in inequality is even acknowledged by those who helped create it. Thus we find the Economist[16] admitting that “Liberalism depends on a belief in progress but, for many voters, progress is what happens to other people. While American GDP per person grew by 14% in 2001-15, median wages grew by only 2%.” The journal also states that “liberals also need to restore social mobility and ensure that economic growth translates into rising wages” yet social mobility falling while inequality rises should be unsurprising (it is easier to climb a hill than a mountain) as is the awkward fact that the least “liberal” nations (continental Europe) have higher social mobility than the USA or UK (“liberal” nations). As for increasing wages, the neo-liberal agenda has been to regulate workers and our unions by anti-union laws to stop just that happening which makes a mockery of the claim that “[i]n the 1970s liberals concluded that the embrace of the state had become smothering and oppressive.”[17] It is not hard to conclude that for “liberals” state intervention against workers is just normal – just like defence of capitalist property-rights is not oppressive. Rest assured, their solution to the problems causes by neo-liberalism is yet more neo-liberalism: “a relentless focus on dismantling privilege by battling special interests, exposing incumbent companies to competition and breaking down restrictive practices.” Which was, as discussed in section J.4.2, the rhetoric used to increase state regulation of unions which, in turn, produced all the evils the journal is bemoaning now and which are the opposite outcome to those promised to justify this onslaught on working people and our organisations.

We should not be surprised. Let us not forget that belief is defined as “an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof” (such as Locke’s stories which underlie liberalism in all its forms, particularly propertarianism). Anarchists, however, prefer to study the facts and draw conclusions based on them. The facts of the last few decades clearly support Proudhon’s analysis – rising productivity and level wages show that workers are exploited in production and allows the few to monopolise the gains derived from productivity increases. He also indicated in System of Economic Contradictions how the favoured “solution” of liberalism – more competition – resulted in monopolies (i.e., big companies) which meant that the amount of investment needed to enter the market was an objective barrier which, as well as reducing competition, turned the bulk of the population into wage-workers who have “sold their arms and parted with their liberty” to the few.[18]

Thus the social question remains fundamentally the same as when Proudhon took pen to paper. As is its answer: to end these social problems means ending master-servant relations within the workplace by means of association and abolishing the state that protects them by means of federalism. An account of anarchism which ignores all this would be a travesty and produce false picture of what anarchism is and what counts as anarchist.[19] Sadly, this false picture still exists in academic and other works – based on little more than if someone calls themselves an anarchist then they are. Few (bar the propertarians who fail to recognise the oxymoronic nature of “anarcho”-capitalism) would tolerate adding Nazism to accounts of socialism based on them having “socialist” in their party name – but even this low bar seems to be considered too high for some when it comes to discussing anarchism!

AFAQ was started in the early 1990s, just after the collapse of Stalinism (“socialism” or “communism”) and the corresponding triumphalism of neo-liberals. Japanese-style corporate capitalism was in its “lost decade” and neo-liberalism was being accepted as “common-sense” within the leadership of the “official” opposition (the British Labour Party and its equivalents elsewhere). Yet within ten years, we had the bursting of the dot com bubble and a deep crisis in East-Asia. The latter saw economies previously praised by advocates of capitalism as being a heaven of “free-market” policies become, overnight, statist nightmares. Such is the power of ideology.

Then came the crisis of 2007-8, a crisis caused by neo-liberal policies which – incredible as it may seem – became the means of imposing more of said policies in the name of “Austerity”. The Tories in the UK were particularly good (if that is the right word!) at turning a crisis caused by the 1% and their favoured policies into one apparently caused by New Labour not letting single mothers starve. While the narrative of the crisis turned the facts on their head, they could not stop the policies being implemented dragging out the crisis and turning it into the slowest recovery on record. So the financial crisis showed the bankruptcy of neo-classical economics in two senses. First, mainstream economists did not predict it (while post-Keynesian economists did). Second, the notion of “expansionary austerity” was tried and proven to be as nonsensical as even the mainstream (“bastard”) Keynesians predicted. This resulted in a downward spiral whenever it was tried – whether Greece or the UK (so confirming section C.9 of AFAQ). However, the critics being proven correct was not considered good enough and so when growth – finally! – returned to the UK, the architects of this harmful policy were proclaimed by the much of mainstream press (including the Financial Times) to have been vindicated! Why? Simply because, as with Milton Friedman (see section C.8), the Tories made the rich richer and skewed state intervention even further towards the few.[20]

The global economic crisis rolls on – a classic example, as per section C.7, of a crisis caused by labour being too weak. We have seen the “traditional” left ride the wave of protest in many countries and divert it into parliamentarian avenues – were it quickly died. The example of Greece is the classic example with a left-wing anti-austerity party (Syriza) elected only for it to end up imposing even more stringent austerity measures than before. This confirmed our analysis in section J.2 of AFAQ on why anarchists reject electioneering and support direct action. The pressures on left-wing governments from big business and capital, the willingness the state bureaucracy (the civil service, etc.) to frustrate the policies and decisions of popularly elected governments, all played their role even without the years of campaigning for votes which have traditionally watered-down radical parties long before they achieve office (but not real power). Still, we are sure the true-believers will proclaim that next time they will not make the same mistakes as the Social Democrats, the Greens, and now Syriza. And state socialists call anarchists utopians…

So while proclaiming itself “Scientific Socialism” (an expression, like so much of Marxism, appropriated from Proudhon), it adherents seem wonderfully immune from learning from experience. Marxism continues, albeit in smaller numbers, to put countless numbers off socialism by presenting the cure (socialism) as being worse than the disease (capitalism). This may explain why Marxists so regularly distort anarchist ideas – if Marxism were so robust they would have no need to invent nonsense about anarchism. Yet they do – and section H.2 continues to be of use in replying to them. It may also explain why some Marxists prefer to invoke the Spanish Revolution than the Russian (understandably given how bad Lenin’s regime was!) or seek to associate their ideology with far more appealing forms of socialism (such as syndicalism[21]). Again, AFAQ is there to show the flaws in such attempts – and to show that much of what passes for “Marxism” was first expounded by anarchists[22] but without the authoritarian and metaphysical baggage.

Anarchists have long critiqued state socialism but on the assumption (sometimes unstated or mentioned in passing) that we were the genuine socialists. The logic is simple enough – the state is a hierarchical body and so based on inequality and so state socialism violated socialist principles (namely, equality) and could not, therefore, produce a socialist society. This was based on empirical evidence which shows that states developed to impose minority rule and the conclusion that, as a result, it cannot be used to end it. As Proudhon argued:

“And who benefits from this regime of unity? The people? No, the upper classes […] Unity, today and since 1815, is quite simply a form of bourgeois exploitation under the protection of bayonets. Yes, political unity, in the great States, is bourgeois: the positions which it creates, the intrigues which it causes, the influences which it cherishes, all that is bourgeois and goes to the bourgeois.”[23]

Even if we smash the existing state and replace it with a new one (marked, like all states, by centralisation and hierarchy, even an elected one) then it will just reproduce a new class system (this is a major theme of section H). The centralised, hierarchical, state is “the cornerstone of bourgeois despotism and exploitation”[24] and “nothing resembles a monarchy more than a unitarian republic [république unitaire].”[25] It would be wishful thinking to conclude that an institutional structure so well suited to minority rule could produce a classless society and, as the Bolshevik regime showed (section H.6), we anarchists were proven correct.

Yet with Leninism and Social-Democracy becoming so dominant, anarchists often stopped calling themselves socialists or communists in order to distance themselves (understandably!) from both. If most people understood “communism” to be the Soviet Union then talking about a libertarian, or free, communism may be confusing. Similarly, if “socialism” meant centralisation and nationalisation (rather than federalism and workers’ self-management) or slowly making capitalism slightly better (rather than replacing it with something better) then it is understandable that some anarchists would drop the term. Simply put the anarchist vision of socialism was at odds with what most people considered it to mean:

“socialism is... the extinction of poverty, the elimination of capitalism and of wage labour, the transformation of property, the decentralisation of government, the organisation of universal suffrage, the effective and direct sovereignty of the workers, the balance of economic forces, the substitution of the contractual regime for the legal regime, etc., etc.”[26]

Sadly, some took anti-statism as the defining characteristic of anarchism and forgot the underlying assumption of socialism. AFAQ showed that this was not the case. It also debunked the nonsense of “anarcho”-capitalism (in section F) and subsequent research has shown that the notion of a non-socialist “anarchism” is at odds with the history of anarchism as both a theory and a movement. Even the individualist anarchists – who were the closest to classical liberalism – rejected capitalist property-rights and recognised that capitalism exploited the worker (see section G). Ignoring this Proudhon-influenced analysis and the rough equality its advocate’s expected it to produce results in something very much at odds with their aspirations. However, “anarcho”-capitalists are, as when AFAQ was started, just an annoyance for a few zealots on the internet and some academics funded by propertarian “think-tanks” or wealthy backers does not equate to a movement – particularly given the obvious theoretical contradiction between claiming to be “libertarian” while supporting authoritarian social relationships (namely, private hierarchies – section B.1). As Kropotkin summarised:

“They understand that, as they live amidst sociable creatures, such as men are, they never would free themselves if they tried to free themselves alone, individually, without taking the others into account. To have the individual free, they must strive to constitute a society of equals, wherein every one would be possessed of equal rights to the treasuries of knowledge and to the immense wealth accumulated by mankind and its civilisation, wherein nobody should be compelled to sell his labour (and consequently, to a certain degree, his personality) to those who intend to exploit him.

“This is why Anarchy necessarily is Communist, why it was born amidst the international Socialist movement, and why an individualist, if he intends to remain Individualist, cannot be an Anarchist.

“He who intends to retain for himself the monopoly of any piece of land or property, or any other portion of the social wealth, will be bound to look for some authority which could guarantee to him possession of this piece of land, or this portion of the modern machinery ― so as to enable him to compel others to work for him.

“Either the individual will join a society of which all the members own, all together, such a territory, such machinery, such roads, and so on, and utilise them for the life of all ― and then he will be a Communist; or he will apply to some sort of authority, placed above society, and obtain from it the right of taking, for his own exclusive and permanent use, such a portion of the territory or the social wealth. And then he will NOT be an Anarchist: he will be an authoritarian.”[27]

Hopefully academics will do their research and start to exclude “anarcho”-capitalism from accounts of anarchism and start to note how right-wing “libertarians” have twisted the meaning of the word in order to defend various private authoritarian social relationships (not least those associated with property). Sadly, given the quality of most works on anarchism, this hope may be unfilled – but at least AFAQ exists to show those interested what anarchism really stands for.

Still, there seems to be an improvement within academic circles – perhaps because there has been an increase in anarchist academics? This can be seen by many important works which have increased our understanding of both anarchist thinkers and movements and which have been published, often by AK Press, in cheaper editions. So in terms of serious research, anarchism is being better served than was often the case in the past – myths are being debunked and I hope AFAQ has played its part in that.

Yet theory without practice is of little use and producing accurate accounts of past anarchists and movements, while important, does not bring anarchy closer. Twenty years is a long time and there is still no sign of the social revolution – although social revolts continue aplenty! Does this mean AFAQ was a waste of time? Far from it! To think that misunderstands what anarchism is – it is not a vision of a “perfect” society but rather a movement aiming to change the world for the better. Sometimes our resistance – like the class struggle it is part of – is small-scale, invisible, securing minor victories or just slowing down the decisions of the powerful (whether the state or the boss). Sometimes our resistance explodes into the public and the revolt becomes newsworthy. Regardless of the size of activity, anarchists work today to make the world a bit more libertarian. As Kropotkin put it:

“Anarchists are thus forced to work without respite and without delay […]

“They must reaffirm the main philosophical cornerstones of Anarchy. They must incorporate scientific methods, for these will help to reshape ideas: the myths of history will be debunked, along with those of social economy and philosophy […]

“They must participate in the daily struggle against oppression and prejudice in order to maintain a spirit of revolt everywhere people feel oppressed and possess the courage to rise up.

“They must thwart the clever machinations of all those parties who were once allies but who now are hostile, who seek now to divert onto authoritarian paths those movements which were originally spawned in revolt against the oppression of Capital and State.

“And finally […] they have to find, within the practice of life itself and indeed working through their own experiences, new ways in which social formations can be organised, be they centred on work, community or region, and how these might emerge in a liberated society, freed from the authority of governments and those who would subject us to poverty and hunger.”[28]

If AFAQ has helped some people to join the struggle, to defend and extend what freedoms we have, to combat inequality in wealth and power, then it has been a worthwhile project even if an anarchist society remains an inspiration rather than a reality. It has brought that society a bit closer by showing the world what anarchism actually is, by debunking myths, by showing that there is an alternative and how the struggles of today create it to some degree.

For never forget that we create the new world when we resist the old. Even today we have the choice of acting in a libertarian manner or in an authoritarian one: we can organise with our fellow workers to resist the oppression and exploitation of our bosses – or be servile, know our place and grumble over low wages; we can resist the decisions of politicians by organising our communities – or wait quietly for four years to vote for the lesser evil; we can take to the streets in protest at the murderous results of racism – or just turn the channel and hope you will remain unaffected; we can struggle against patriarchy – or remain quiet; we can fight to ensure everyone can be themselves – or acquiesce to “popular” prejudices; we can encourage co-operative alternatives to wage-labour, landlordism and officialdom – or quietly consume while muttering about being ripped off.